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New York City has a thriving start-up scene and now is firmly established as the number two innovation center behind Silicon Valley. The ramp in momentum can be felt across the city landscape from the mayor’s office where Michael Bloomberg is cheerleader in chief for the New York tech economy to the real estate industry where brokers are trying to keep up with demand for open-seating office space in the Union Square and Flat Iron districts. In a depressed national job market, headhunters have their hands full filling new technical and business development positions.

While many of us see this activity as just the early stages of what will become a long-term, sustainable component of the New York economy, some veteran observers are already forecasting the collapse of another tech bubble. In a recent blog post called “Time to Start Worrying about a Tech Bubble”, Greg David, former editor of Crain’s New York Business, argues that venture investment was down in the second and third quarters and this may not be an aberration. Connie Loizos in a PE Hub Wire e-mail poses the question “Could New York’s Startup Scene Hit the Wall in 2013?”, and discusses the large gap that New York startups face in becoming successful enterprise software companies. A recent seed stage investing report from CB Insights termed the impending bubble phenomenon, the “Series A Crunch” -- which is described as a “supply-demand imbalance that will result in over 1,000 seeded startups being orphaned and more than $1 billion of investment evaporating.”

We disagree. We anticipate that 2013 will be a big year for NYC’s Start-Ups. Here’s why.

First, New York City is not Silicon Valley. It is a fresh ecosystem. The Valley grew out of a handful of extremely successful technology companies where talented employees exited, with large payouts in hand, to start new companies. These in turn led to new companies, often by second and third time founders. New York, by contrast, is shedding seasoned executives from established corporations who are teaming up with young tech entrepreneurs to create disruptive business models for their industries. For example, former Interpublic and Mediabrand digital wunderkind Bant Breen, the person who bought the original startup investment to IPG, just launched the beta version of Qnary, a “personal identity management platform that helps users shape how they’re seen online.” Dazhi Chen, the former products manager and investment professional with MSD Capital (Dell’s investment fund) has been growing Relevant, a mobile customer relationship management platform for the restaurant industry. These ventures are more likely to be quietly absorbed by the corporations they are disrupting rather than making front page news as high profile IPOs.

Second, we believe that large established companies will continue to invest in New York based start-ups, particularly at the seed stage. Traditionally, corporate venture capital has shied away from seed stage investing. However, according to a recent report from CB Insights, the percentage of corporate venture seed stage investments increased to 14% of total deals in the third quarter compared to 8% in the second quarter. Recent examples of startup companies that received significant corporate venture funding include social advertising company Adaptly ($10.5 million) and social TV app Get Glue ($12 million), both from Time Warner. Online publisher Buzzfeed received funding from Hearst Media, and patient health records company Hello Health brought in an investment from Sandbox Industries, a venture fund sponsored by BlueCross and BlueShield. We expect this trend to continue well into 2013.

Third, accelerators, seed funds and co-working spaces will continue to set up shop in New York. Over the last several years, we have seen a number of these programs established here – giving the seal of approval to New York’s burgeoning startup community. Recent entrants include Techstars, DreamIt, ER Accelerator, General Assembly, Astia, We Works Lab, Alley NYC and many more. Well known venture firms Canaan Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners have set up outposts in the past twelve to eighteen months and are actively seeking deals in NYC.

Fourth, New York has become an important point of entry for international investors who are interested in American start-ups, and for overseas companies looking to establish themselves and partner in the U.S. Last month B to V Partners AG, a respected German angel group, spent a week in New York looking at high potential New York based ventures. Electronic Dance Music programmer, OneBeat, and real estate ventures Bid on the City and FindSider have benefited from Russian funding. Increasingly we are seeing Brazilians and other South Americans funneling investment into the U.S as well. Israel has a long standing relationship with New York tech as exemplified by the Israel Global Mobile conference hosted by the Israeli Economic Mission in December.

And finally, while this isn’t necessarily the focus of the New York tech economy, it turns out that a number of more mature homegrown New York startup companies in different technology sectors have a reasonable possibility of going public next year. These companies include well known household names, FourSquare, Fab.com, Gilt Groupe and ZocDoc. As these high growth early stage companies start to list on the public markets and become mature businesses, a new layer of the startup ecosystem around which other startups can be nurtured and launched will be created.

There have been an unprecedented number of new tech companies formed and funded in the New York area in the last couple of years. It is a given that many will not survive to maturity. But a confluence of factors is contributing to the development of New York as an important long term player in start-up tech. We expect 2013 to provide further validation of this trend.

This article was co-authored by Michael Yang, a partner at DEV (Digital Entertainment Ventures).